


Fissures

by sleepingseeker



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 18:55:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5101925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepingseeker/pseuds/sleepingseeker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set soon after Buried Secrets. <br/>They’re both breaking. And the one who pushes everything away, hiding in the safety of the familiar: his anger, will find comfort in the last place he’d ever look. And it just might be the finishing blow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fissures

**Author's Note:**

> For you Raphril shippers, another little piece of heartbreak for you to mull over. Ah, Buried Secrets - so much potential for fic it’s just not funny. I hope you enjoy, feedback is always appreciated!

He froze as he heard the sash below open, bottle half-way to his mouth, thinking immediately that it was Casey coming up to join him where he perched on the slanted roof, just above the widow’s walk of the farmhouse. He’d tell him to get lost, that he didn’t need any more ribbing over losing the card game earlier – especially after all the boasting he’d done.

But it wasn’t Casey.

_Shit!_

He made to scramble away, ninja-style, without being heard or seen, but he forgot that he wasn’t the only ninja on that roof. Even though she was still technically training and a far way from being close to him and his brothers, she was sharp-eyed. And being some kind of empath or whatever the hell it was that she had, only helped. Playing ninja-tag with her was hell.

“Oh,” April said, looking up, spotting him in his clumsy position, partly twisted, partly rising.

He settled back and tried to play off his moment of bungling retreat as nothing but shifting to be more comfortable.

“Hey,” he said, barely giving her a glance, staring off into the darkening view the rooftop offered. Aloof. Disinterested.

The trees at the edge of the forest were awash in purple tones, deepening to a charcoal that blurred the expanse across the meadow running up to their property line. Above the rustling leaves, the sky dissolved the last of the sun’s rays in a molten mix of tangerine, gold and crimson. Twilight was stealing away most of the sky, crawling overhead in long streaks of steel-blue clouds.

She hesitated, unsure, caught between wanting to join him and wanting to be alone, the reason she’d come up here, he was sure. Because there was no way she’d been looking for him. He was the last person to take any comfort from. He made damn sure that she understood that. He had to. It was a matter of self-preservation.

The moment stretched and became awkward. Something he’d taken great pains to avoid during their stay here.

“Wanna sit?” he blurted, neck immediately heating.

That was the last thing he wanted, to sit here, trapped on the roof with April. Alone.

_What the hell am I doin’?_

His heart did the little extra ba-thump it did whenever she was near him, one that swelled and hurt within his chest in a way that made him anxious and terribly, hopelessly sad.

Sad didn’t work for him. Sad made him angry. And angry felt better. Angry meant punching and kicking. Screaming. Release in its own sweet form. He narrowed his eyes, gritted his teeth, feeling the familiar, protective surge of irritation rising up. Warming him.

He opened his mouth to say something, rude, something that would make her back off and go away. But April shrugged and looked away, wiping at her cheek. He stiffened. His mouth snapped shut.

She’d been crying. Again.

“Hey,” he croaked, unable to articulate anything beyond that.

As if making up her mind, she jabbed her sneaker atop the railing of the porch and lurched upwards. He caught her by the forearm and pulled her the rest of the way. In one smooth move, she turned and plopped down next to him. She sniffed and said nothing else.

They sat, side by side, awkward and in silence for a span of a few heartbeats when her head dropped to his shoulder.

Raph froze.

His thoughts scattered like panicked field mice in the shadow of an owl. There was a void where his emotional storm of sorrow-morphed-into-anger just a moment before had resided. Now the hollow space carved him like a hapless pumpkin. But it wasn’t empty. Damn him.

It was filled with poison. The worst kind: hope.

His arm twitched and his palm began to sweat around the bottle of beer he still clutched. His duplicitous needs wrestled, one wanting to throw a comforting arm around her, to pull her close and promise that somehow he would make things right again for her; the other wanting to sidle away, to make it clear this was not something he was comfortable doing. It was unwanted, uninvited and wrong. This closeness.

Because it hurt to be near her.

But it hurt to keep her at arm’s-length, also. But it was what he had to do. It was the Right Thing To Do.

That’s what Leo would tell him, had he ever had the courage to open up with his older brother, the closest thing to an actual friend he had, besides Casey, about the situation he was mired within. That’s what Sensei would say, he was sure, if he’d ever taken the opportunity his father had always said was there.

An opportunity that was now gone, forever.

The ugly reality that he’d batted constantly from his consciousness hit him.  _Splinter_.

His throat tightened. Homesickness attacked him. And grief. Unseen enemies lurking around the corners of his more vulnerable moments. His breath squeezed through pinching lungs, trying to puff past his pressing lips. His eyes burned until he was forced to shut them, tightly.

The tiniest mew broke free from the base of his throat. His glassy eyes popped open and widened as he heard it. But it was too late to take it back.

April tensed.

Raphael’s heart was galloping, stomach twisting in a sour knot. Embarrassment tasted like burning bile building just at the back of his tongue.

She turned. Fresh tears sparkled along the very tops of her freckled cheeks.

Irrationally, he wondered if they were salty.

“Raph?” she asked, voice small, concerned, full of too many questions in that one spoken word. Her gaze was full of a soft compassion that only seemed to drive the pain deeper.

Horrified, he felt his eyes welling. If he could, he’d have sucked the tears right back into their insidious little sockets. He couldn’t move, lest any slight motion cause the moisture to spill over the bottom lid of his eyes.

Stuck, he stared at her, muted and afraid. On the edge of breaking. Having been nothing but a solid wall made up of strength and willpower, an impenetrable stockade against it all; a living wall -- to her, to the situation, to his fears, his doubts, his despair – he felt himself fracturing. A hair-line, nothing more, a tiny fissure, but it threatened everything he’d built in order to remain functioning while the world around them turned to chaos.

He followed her hand with his eyes, unable to move, as it rose up, higher, higher still, where he didn’t want it and wanted it with all that made him who he was – to the side of his face. She cupped his cheek.

And god help him, he pressed into it, closing his eyes, releasing the treacherous tears.

“It’s going to be okay,” she whispered.

And he knew, without a doubt in his soul, that she was wrong.

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End file.
